Saturday, October 06, 2012

Corporations Are People, My Friend

But Mr. Aglialoro, chief executive of exercise-equipment maker Cybex International and a longtime disciple of "Atlas Shrugged" author Ayn Rand, thinks the timing is right [for "Atlas Shrugged, Part II"].

...

"Part II" faced a new setback when Cybex lost a liability lawsuit in 2010 alleging that one of its weight machines had tipped over on a woman, leaving her paralyzed.

"I feel so sorry for her," Mr. Aglialoro says. "She jumped up on there and pulled the machine back on herself while she was stretching." The parties settled for $19.5 million in February. Cybex stock dropped so low the company faced delisting.

Aglialoro goes way back as a crank. A couple of decades ago when I was a lowly copy editor at a group of trade magazines, he purched an entire section of advertorial in one of them to irrigate his claim that his machines could accurately test for back injuries -- an assertion denied by all credible professionals in the field. His desultory exposition made no sense, but it didn't have to, as he paid in full for its publication...